No surprise: Blacks are our scapegoats

Suzy Post

I was not the least surprised by your headline "ACLU slams racial arrests" in the June 5 Courier-Journal. Why would I be? Blacks are our national scapegoats. Their uniform: their skin. Because they cannot escape their skin, other minority groups, often scapegoated, are bypassed. Jews like me can "pass" unnoticed. Ditto Catholics, often the scapegoat of choice in other countries. Homosexuals were really useful as scapegoats until so many "came out" that it has become a surprising status symbol.

Communities need scapegoats. (See Gordon Allport's book, "The Nature of Prejudice." And if that doesn't tell you what I would hope it would, you could see Shirley Jackson's brilliant short story, "The Lottery.") But for those of you who aren't readers, let me try and put it in my own language.

We get a lot of different people in a city or a country. We get tall people, short people, smart people, less smart people, pretty or handsome people, all kinds of people. In a country as large as ours, we also get a lot of immigrant people. My heritage was German Jewish. But there are Irish Catholic, Indian people, Japanese and Chinese people, very tall people and very short people. There are even people with two or three or maybe even four ethnic backgrounds. It makes for an impressive and tasty stew of folks from all over the world with all sorts of heritages.

In the past, we blamed our problems on the Chinese, and during the Second World War we picked on Japanese Americans. That means Americans of Japanese descent. Just as I am an American of German Jewish descent, these people were as American as me. But because Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, these Japanese Americans, many of whom had never even visited Japan, were rounded up into camps for the duration of the war. Were we sorry? Recently (the war ended in 1945), we apologized. Americans have such good manners.

So many of us got off the scapegoat hook. Maybe you are one of them. If so, be grateful for the American Negro. Arriving here in chains, he was obviously less than us. After a late Emancipation, he or she is stuck with a beautiful black skin that can't be taken off (except when it was by the master's whip). So of course there are a disproportionate number of imprisoned blacks for possession of marijuana. And if you compare that figure to the number of whites imprisoned for using methamphetamine or coke, surprise! Another disproportionate number. So much lower although the drugs of choice are so much more powerful than common old marijuana, about to be legalized in several jurisdictions.

The real question is will African Americans in this country ever be as easily assimilated as those with different sexual orientations are now being assimilated.

So no, your headline and its text weren't surprising to me at all. We have African American sitting ducks on many streets corners west of Broadway. Or for the sake of diversity, in many cars driving outside the West End. And I speak from more than a little personal experience. I was the director of the ACLU of Kentucky for eight years, until 1990. We desegregated our schools during that time, and everything is coming up roses there, isn't it? Rumors have it that black kids are suspended more often than whites, but I have no evidence to offer at this date. Maybe The Courier-Journal could look into it.

SUZY POST

Louisville 40206

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No surprise: Blacks are our scapegoats

I was not the least surprised by your headline 'ACLU slams racial arrests' in the June 5 Courier-Journal. Why would I be? Blacks are our national scapegoats. Their uniform: their skin.